Throughout his 2024 campaign, former President Donald Trump has managed to maintain political activity by walking a delicate financial tightrope. The guilty verdict in a Manhattan hush money case added to a long list of legal challenges that have so far cost him more than $100 million in donor money.
Campaign finance experts say a unique combination of fundraising tactics and legal maneuvers helped Trump’s campaign climb out of a financial rut that has raised questions about his competitiveness.
Since leaving the White House in 2020, Trump has exploited a little-known loophole in campaign finance law to pay his mounting legal costs, which have totaled about $90,000 a day over the past three years, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
Revelations from the campaign show that Trump used a network of political action committees (PACs) to funnel donor money to a leadership PAC he founded called Save America, which primarily pays his legal fees. These groups are separate from his official campaign and are not subject to the same restrictions by the FEC.
“This has been a problem for years, if not decades,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center. “Leadership PACs are often used as a kind of slush fund by candidates and officeholders to pay for whatever they want without any real oversight.”
The practice of using political donations for a candidate’s legal purposes is not uncommon. The filing shows that President Joe Biden recently used donations from the Democratic National Committee to pay lawyers in a case involving confidential documents. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who is running for re-election and facing trial over an alleged bribery scheme, has spent $2 million in campaign funds on legal services.
These practices are technically permitted under FEC rules because they relate to a candidate’s ability to run for office. For personal legal matters like Trump’s New York business fraud case, the use of political donations is banned, experts say.
Ghosh said the FEC and Congress are unlikely to take enforcement action against Trump because both parties benefit from the practice.
“Trump is the most visible example because he’s doing it on a scale that’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen before, but pretty much everyone is doing it,” Ghosh said. “That’s the problem.”
Ghosh said the FEC has received more than 40 complaints about Trump’s misuse of campaign funds, but not a single case has been investigated.
With three more criminal cases awaiting trial, Trump’s legal fees are expected to continue to rise. But a new wave of support from major donors and an influx of smaller donations following the May 30 guilty verdict have helped offset the financial strain on his campaign. In the week after the trial, Trump’s team and the RNC said they had raised $141 million in May, in addition to the millions raised after the verdict.
Experts say the new wave of funding is part of a strategy by the Trump campaign to capitalize on his legal challenges and also appeal to wealthier donors.
Watch the video above to learn more about who these megadonors are and how Trump has managed to keep his political operation running despite unprecedented legal obstacles.
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2024-06-13 11:00:01
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